^
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS
AT
AUSTIN
by leon dennen
national committee
for a free europe, inc.
ONLY A WOHLl) BUILT ON THE IDEALS
oi'^ iTU':r:i)()M and democracy can live
IN PEACE.
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W-i
THE SOVIET
PEACE MYTH
by LEON DENNEN
NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR A FREE EUROPE, INC,
^S£^^£^^£4^£^5£^£^^£^^£<^£^^^^^£^£^^£<^£^£^^i^^£<^^^^£<^£^£i^£^£^^^^£^
CONTBNTS
Page
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: Distortion of History 5
Chapter 2: The Slogan of Peace — Weapon for War . . 10
Chapter 3: Innocents and Victims 15
Chapter 4: The Stockholm Appeal 21
Chapter 5; The Battle for Freedom and Peace ... 29
ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . .
Leon Dennen has long been a keen observer of the political
scene in Europe. He is the author of TROUBLE ZONE (Ziff-Davis
Company, 1945). He has written numerous articles on international
affairs, politics, and labor in national magazines and newspapers.
Mr. Dennen has also lectured extensively on European events in this
country. At present he is foreign correspondent for the Newspaper
Enterprise Association in Europe.
INTRODUCTION
L
(ESS than a decade after the defeat
of Hitler and his allies, fear of another war and the extension
of totalitarian slavery, stalk through the world. Economies are
being geared for war. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
is mobilizing its vast physical and moral resources to repel a
threatened Soviet attack on its freedom and independence.
Civilized society hopes that the folly and horror of an atomic
conflict can be avoided. Humanity everywhere longs for peace
and security. Certainly the entire history of the American people
points to its deep love for peace and an aversion for militarism.
As Americans we equally abhor slavery. We realize only too well
that totalitarian enslavement and war are twin brothers. Where
there are slaves there are masters — leaders with unlimited power
to plunge their people into war.
War is not inevitable. A profound change in international
events and of the world's intellectual climate may deter aggres-
sion. But following the Soviet-backed invasion of South Korea
by North Korean and Chinese communists, it would indeed be
unrealistic, if not foolhardy, to indulge in wishful thinking, refuse
to face issues squarely — to ignore the reality of our tragic era.
The problems confronting us today are similar in many
respects to those we faced in World War II. The last war was
not merely a conflict backed by tanks, guns, ships and airplanes,
but also a war of fundamental ideas. Some of our present-day
social philosophers, political leaders and diplomats steer in wide
circles around the fact that the war had a moral and sheerly
human content. They evade the memory of the fact that basically
a contest between democracy and totalitarianism was involved —
that because this conflict was not resolved with the defeat of
Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese militarists, world peace is now
again in jeopardy. But the common people of the world have not
forgotten the simple moral and political goals for which they
suffered and sacrificed in World War II. They remember the
thrilling promises of a better world as embodied in the Atlantic
Charter, the United Nations and in the oratory and poetry of
World War XL They yearn for a world that will provide safe-
guards from the three deadly evils — war, tyranny and poverty.
Civilized society passionately desires peace yet it is being
drawn towards an atomic war. Why? Who is to blame for the
present chaotic and tragic state of international affairs? A careful
analysis of existing world tensions will provide at least part of
the answer. Peace can be secured only if all governments,
especially the Big Four, deliberately strive to achieve the widest
possible cooperation between nations, based on the principles of
liberty, equality and human decency. But it has long been evident
that the desperate efforts of the United Nations and the Western
Powers to secure peace have been constantly frustrated by Soviet
Russia and the Cominform parties. The Soviet leaders have clearly
been working on the principle that they have more to gain by
fostering fear, confusion and chaos than by working for world
cooperation. The universal anxiety created by the Kremlin's
conspiratorial and ever-shifting policies represents the greatest
single danger to world peace. The widespread existence of com-
munist fifth columns and the Cominform's clandestine well-armed
and well-disciplined commando detachments operating every-
where outside the Iron Curtain, is another grave threat to the
security of the non-communist world.
Soviet leaders clearly consider peace as but a phase of the
constant conflict which they are waging against democratic
society. Their active support of any "peace movement" must con-
sequently be viewed as a strategy for gaining the maximum sup-
port for Soviet Russia from groups which are generally not in
sympathy with communist goals. Indeed, the periodic and well-
publicized "peace campaigns" of the Kremlin Politburo and the
Cominform are but a camouflage for a totalitarian policy of mili-
tarism and imperialist expansion.
Let us examine the record.
DISTORTION
OF HISTORY
I
OSEF STALIN, Premier of the Soviet
Union, in one of his most important pronouncements on foreign
policy in recent years, charged on February 17, 1951, as he has
done on other occasions for the past three decades, that it was
the "billionaires and millionaires" and our "reactionary Govern-
ments" who were frantically preparing to launch an atomic war.
He accused the "warmongers" and "capitalists" of the United
States, Great Britain and France of harboring aggressive aims in
order to obtain super-profits, and to plunder other countries. He
criticized the United Nations for having become "a weapon of
aggressive war." At the same time, Stalin reiterated Russia's desire
for peace. "As for the Soviet Union," he said, "it will continue
in the future as well, unswervingly to pursue a policy of averting
war and preserving peace."
A similar charge was leveled against western intellectuals
by Ilya Ehrenburg, another influential communist spokesman.
The Soviet writer and ace propagandist had invited leading
Western writers, scientists and educators to sign the Cominform-
sponsored Stockholm Appeal for outlawing the atom bomb.
Among the vast majority who declined were 109 Norwegian
writers who replied that, "Ehrenburg did not find on his five-
page letter a single space to mention at least once the word
peace." They pointed out that the Stockholm Appeal deliberately
omitted any provisions for the enforcement of any degree of
general disarmament. It was restricted to atomic weapons and
silent as to any over-all limitation in standing armies, submarines,
A
airplanes, non-atomic bombs, warships and poison gas, to say
nothing of bacteriological warfare.
Though the Stockholm Appeal was directed against the atom
bomb, the Norwegian writers said in reply to Ehrenburg, "it was
not against war as an evil of all things."
Ilya Ehrenburg waxed indignant: reaching into the stacks
of official Soviet propaganda, he soon "discovered" that the Nor-
wegian writers were "warmongers" who sympathized "with the
policy of America" and approved "of their own government's
action of concluding a war-alliance with the United States."
Even more uncomplimentary to the western intellectuals —
"the pitiful and despised renegades who claim to be writers" —
was the Literaturnaia Gazeta, official Soviet literary organ.* In
an angry editorial, the Literaturnaia Gazeta berated such world-
famous literary and cultural figures as Francois Mauriac, Jules
Romain, Andre Mahaux, J. B. Priestley and scores of others, not
forgetting the recalcitrant Norwegian writers, for their refusal
to sign the Stockholm Appeal. It warned these intellectual
"enemies of peace" that the "people of the world hate the insti-
gators of war . . . the enemies of freedom and enemies of life
itself." There was even a threat implied against President Truman,
Winston Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister Attlee, Jules Moch,
French socialist Minister of Defense, and the leading French
daily newspaper, Figaro: "Beginning with the Fuhrer in Wash-
ington," wrote the Literaturnaia Gazeta, "to the drunks of the
Ku-Klux-Klan, from the old hangman Churchill to the Laborite
Cannibal, from Jules Moch to the Figaro these criminals will one
day be judged before a court of nations."
Equally violent was the "Hate- America" diatribe by P. N.
Pospelov, a top ideological leader of Bolshevism and president
of Moscow's Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. Speaking on the
twenty-seventh anniversary of Lenin's death, Pospelov "proved"
that the United States was always an enemy of Russia and the
Russian people. Completely perverting historic truth, he even
accused President Woodrow Wilson of having been "one of the
main inspirers of world imperialism's armed intervention against
the young Soviet Republic."
** Literaturnaia Gazeta, Moscow, August 1, 1950.
6
In the presence of Stalin and other members of the all-
powerful Soviet Politburo, Pospelov drew a continuous parallel
between the "American imperialists" and the Hitlerite barbarians,
their common preparations for war, and their common plans to
dismember Russia. He made the completely fantastic charge that
"American troops murdered and tortured scores of thousands of
Russians" and that "the hands of American imperialists are
stained with the blood of the Russian people."
These wholesale distortions of historical facts (particularly
about the traditional friendship between the American and Rus-
sian peoples) are, of course, not new in the history of Bolshevism.
From the first day of their seizure of power in Russia in 1917,
leading Soviet spokesmen sought to put the onus of fomenting
war on Western capitalists, statesmen and intellectuals. The
works of Lenin, the founder of Russian Bolshevism, and Stalin,
his heir and faithful disciple, are replete with such charges.
Indeed, from Lenin to Stalin to the lowliest communist agitator,
whether operating in the United States or in the remote regions
of the African Congo, Bolsheviks have always regarded the
industrial, political and cultural leaders of the western democ-
racies, as "warmongers" and "enemies of peace."
The objective historian of tomorrow will indeed have to
probe deeply and diligently into the mountain of contradictory
evidence to find the essential facts about our tragic era. Propa-
ganda has become a fine art in our epoch. The nation with an
effective propaganda apparatus can conceal, distort and impose
its own version of the truth. It can mold public opinion through
willing agents and unwilling dupes. The Russians are, of course,
masters at propaganda. It is, thus, altogether likely that many
Soviet pubhc relations fables of the moment will go down as
facts in the history books.
But propaganda is a dangerous substitute for truth. In the
long run, humanity will pay dearly for illusions, self-deceptions,
and a fear of confronting unpleasant truths squarely.
^. Winston Churchill once referred to Bolshevik policy as a
/riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Few in the
West have been able to fully comprehend the aims and plans of
Leninist-Stalinist dialectics or see through communist manoeuvres.
To normal men and women reared under Western standards of
morality, Bolshevism, which rejects reason, decency and freedom
as nothing more than "a bourgeois myth", is indeed a mystery
and an enigma. It need not be: as in the case of Hitler's Mein
Kampf, a careful study of the Soviet counterpart as written by
Lenin and Stalin would soon reveal the true aims and plans
of Stalinism. For in these turgid volumes the communist theore-
ticians and spiritual guides make it clear beyond a doubt, that
according to the basic tenets of Leninism-Stalinism, the over-
throw of western civilization, which communists regard as weak
and decadent, and Soviet mastery of the world are the final goals
of Bolshevism. These goals, in turn, can be achieved only through
armed revolution.
Leon Trotsky, one of the early leaders of Bolshevism, and
subsequently a mortal enemy of Stalin, once proclaimed the
permanent revolution. Stalin, in effect, now proclaims the perma-
nent war. In pursuit of the permanent war which, the Soviet
leaders believe, must inevitably result in the disintegration of
the West, Bolshevism has repudiated as a matter of doctrine all
western standards of morality. It has made a science of mendacity
and is using, in Lenin's words, "any ruse, cunning, unlawful
method, evasion and concealment of the truth" to gain what it
believes to be its revolutionary destiny.
During the famous Congress of Vienna, Prince von Metter-
nich, the shrewd Austrian statesman of the nineteenth century,
was said to have replied to the news of the sudden death of a
contemporary Russia diplomat with the thoughtful question:
"What was his real intention?" This anecdote illustrates the sus-
picion with which the world then viewed the moves of Russian
diplomacy, no less puzzling under the Czars in 1815 than it is
today under Stalin.
The belief that Communism and Russian imperialism can
be separated is one of the dangerous fallacies of our time. Rus-
sian history under the Bolshevik regime is, in more than one
sense, an extension of traditional Czarist policy. Just as Pan-
Slavism was an instrument of Czarist expansion, so is Communism
an instrument of Soviet imperialism.
What, then, is Soviet Russia's real policy and how does the
Kremlin plan to carry it out? We are still guessing. The world
is still pondering the seemingly imponderable.
Do the Soviet rulers want war as actively as Hitler wanted
it in 1939 after the conclusion of the Stalin-Hitler Pact?
Are the men of the all-powerful Politburo, which controls
the destinies of more than one-third of the globe, determined to
pick off the weaker members of the non-totalitarian world, one by
one, gathering the fruits of war without fighting a general war?
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THE SLOGAN OF PEACE
-WEAPON FOR WAR
Wo
ORLD imperialism," Lenin said,
'cannot live side by side with a victorious Soviet Union."
This dictum, as all other theoretical precepts of the Father of
Bolshevism, has been the guiding principle of Stalin and the
Politburo for over three decades. By world imperialism Lenin,
of course, meant non-communist Western society.
While, however, declaring a permanent war against the
Western world, the Bolsheviks have also proclaimed themselves
as the outstanding champions of peace. From time to time, as
it suits Soviet foreign policy, they even speak of the "peaceful
coexistence of capitalism and communism." The reason for this
deception is not far to seek: peace as merely a slogan and peace
as a goal of policy are entirely different concepts. To communists,
peace is but a phase of the constant conflict which they are
waging with the non-communist world. This was made abund-
antly clear by the Sixth Congress of the Communist International
held in Moscow in 1928 (at a time when Stalin was reaching out
for power over the corpses of his former colleagues), which
declared in a resolution:
"The peace policy of the proletarian state certainly does
not imply that the Soviet State has become reconciled with
capitalism. ... It is merely another — and under present
conditions — a more advantageous form of fighting capi-
talism. ..." *
* International Press Correspondence, English edition of the official publica-
tion of the Comintern, November 28, 1928.
10
Officially adopted at a congress of the Comintern (now
changed to Cominform), the resolution needs no further elucida-
tion. Soviet leaders believe they can further their aims sometimes
through war and sometimes through peace. Their strategy de-
pends on the objective conditions. The choice of a "peace strategy"
simply indicates that the masters of the Kremlin believe that,
for a given time, such a strategy is likely to yield the most satis-
factory results. The Communist invasion of South Korea, for
instance, was launched at the height of Moscow's campaign for
the Stockholm Appeal to outlaw the atom bomb.
The Bolsheviks and their followers in the United States and
elsewhere throughout the world, early learned the utility of de-
picting themselves as champions of peace. They continue to
use this proved device. Their propaganda seeks to identify the
Soviet Union and Communist parties elsewhere, with peace in
the minds of the peoples of the world.
In his report to the Fifteenth Convention of the Communist
Party of the United States, Gus Hall, National Secretary of the
Party, echoing Stalin's line, had many harsh words to say about
the "murderous aggression by the profit-greedy, war-mad Wall
Street monopoHsts." * He blamed "American imperialism" for
the present war tension. "American imperialism," he told his
fellow-communists, "has moved from the stage of war prepara-
tions and war talk to open military aggression against the people
of Korea and China, and intervention against the peoples of
Viet Nam, Indo-China and the Philippines."
Emphasizing again that the confidence of the American
Communists "is firmly grounded in the world-liberating science
of Marxism-Leninism," Mr. Hall outlined his party's tasks. The
struggle for "peace" was, of course, the task number one:
"We must do everything possible to mobilize our Party
for the central task of defending world peace. Concretely,
we must put in motion every force that can help broaden
out the peace movement, and use every available channel
to achieve this goal. We must assign additional man-
power and womanpower to all existing peace movements,
» See Gus Hall's pamphlet entitled "Peace Can be Won" New Century Pub-
lishers, New York, January, 1951. The Convention was held m New York City
on December 28-31, 1950.
11
and to speeding the organization of new committees and
groups. . . ."
The American follower of Stalin shows little ingenuity,
indeed. He does not even attempt to depart from the beaten
track.
One of the most important instruments of Soviet foreign pol-
icy are "peace" groups, committees and conferences which -are
"spontaneous" gatherings of diverse groups ostensibly inspired
with the sole aim of seeking peace. Such was the "anti-war Con-
gress" held in Amsterdam, Holland in 1932, the "Congress of
Intellectuals for Peace" which met in Wroclaw, Poland, in August,
1948, the "Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace"
held at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in March, 1949 and
the numerous Soviet-sponsored "peace" congresses held before
and since. Such, too, are the "Peace Partisans" (now known as
the "World Peace Movement") who launched the appeal for
outlawing the atom bomb in Stockholm, Sweden, in March, 1950.
The real significance of these "spontaneous" worldwide
"peace" ventures was once explained by Pahniro Togliatti (also
known as Ercoh), Ceneral Secretary of the Italian Communist
Party. A close collaborator of Stalin and one of the leading lights
of the Cominform, Mr. Togliatti declared at the Seventh Congress
of the Communist International held in Moscow in 1935:
". . . when we struggle tenaciously for peace we wish,
in consequence of this struggle, to rally the revolutionary
advance guard around the masses of workers and peasants,
as well as the masses of the small bourgeoisie whom the pro-
letariat, in case of war, must lead towards the transforma-
tion of the imperialist war into civil war against the bour-
geoisie."
For the present the "World Peace Movement" holds the
spotlight as Moscow's main transmission belt for peace propa-
ganda. This movement is directed by a "World Peace Commit-
tee" of 138 persons, of whom seventy-two are known Commu-
nists, thirty representatives of Russia and the satellite countries —
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania
and Eastern Germany - and thirty-six long-established Commu-
nist sympathizers. The "Committee", in turn, following the pat-
12
tern estabHshed by the Bolshevik Party is ruled by a Politburo,
or Permanent Committee, of twelve persons of whom seven are
known and prominent communists and four are politicians who
have consistently supported Soviet policies over many years. The
president of the "World Peace Movement" is Joliot-Curie, a prom-
inent member of the French Communist Party recently dismissed
as director of France's Atomic Energy Commission.
The World Peace Movement is intimately linked to a whole
galaxy of communist international "fronts" such as the World
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the World Federation of
Democratic Youth, the International Union of Students, the
Women's International Democratic Federation, the World Fed-
eration of Democratic Lawyers, the International Organization
of Journalists, the World Federation of Scientific Workers, and
so on. These organizations have affiliates in many countries of
the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France
and other member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation.
The World Peace Movement is today, by Cominform direc-
tive, "the pivot of the entire activity of the communist parties
and democratic organizations." Besides being the chief vehicle
of communist world propaganda, it is the "front" organization
for direct action, sabotage and subversion in the anti-totalitarian
countries.
It was Louis Saillant, one of the French members of the
Permanent Committee of the "World Peace Movement" and
Secretary-General of the Cominform's World Federation of Trade
Unions who first revealed, however cautiously, the real purpose
of this Cominform front. "Propaganda and direct action," he told
the Congress of Peace Partisans in Stockholm in March 1950,
"can no longer be separated. . . . One of the essential duties of
the defenders of peace is the refusal to work on or produce war
material in all capitalist countries." For this purpose, committees
for the defense of peace are to be organized at the places where
men and women carry out their daily work. Gus Hall, addressing
communists in New York City about a year later, was almost
an echo of M. Saillant!
Moscow works fast, indeed! The French Communist
L'Humanite, one of the leading Cominform newspapers in West-
13
em Europe, announced in its issue of September 21, 1950, that
an agreement had already been signed by the pro-communist
Federation of French Dockers with the Cominform's clandestine
German transport workers' unions "to prevent the loading and
unloading of war materials in the ports of France and Western
Germany." The agreement stipulated that, to render action ejffec-
tive, it was necessary to establish "Peace Committees" on every
ship and in every port, and to maintain contact with Peace Com-
mittees in Italy, Belgium, Holland, Britain, Norway, Sweden,
Finland, the United States and Latin America.
As yet, to be sure, there have been few acts of Cominform
sabotage in European ports and the communists have been singu-
larly unsuccessful, despite their well-organized and well-armed
secret commando detachments and Peace Committees in pre-
venting either the loading or unloading of United States war
equipment.
This is entirely due to the resistance of 20,000,000 European
members of the anti-Communist International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), a potential anti-Cominform army
which sprawls from Berlin to Istanbul, Turkey.
The ICFTU, which also includes a large contingent of trade
unionists from the East European and Balkan countries now
dominated by Soviet Russia, was formed in January, 1949 with
the aid of such prominent American labor leaders as David
Dubinsky, George Meaney, Matthew WoU, Philip Murray and
others. Though still young as such organizations go, it is already
the only force in Europe and Asia that is able to counteract
the sabotage efforts of Moscow's puppet World Federation of
Trade Unions. Cooperating with the International Transport
Workers Federation, the ICFTU has succeeded in checkmating
Cominform activity in all major Atlantic and Mediterranean ports.
14
INNOCENTS
AND VICTIMS
B
^►ERTRAND RUSSELL, one of the
foremost philosophers and political thinkers of our age once wrote
that "In EngHsh history, as taught to children, there are 'good'
kings and 'bad' kings. The oligarchy of Czarist aristocrats was
'bad' but that of the Communist Party is 'good'. This attitude is
unworthy of grown-up people." *
Mr. Russell's observation may well be applied to American
history as it was taught in the years 1941-47 when Soviet Russia
was still regarded as democracy's "greatest ally" and the ruling
ohgarchy of the Kremlin as the "good kings". So widespread,
indeed, was the Soviet mystique, so strong its emotional dynam-
ism, that a kind of intellectual terror pervaded our political and
intellectual life. It was not only respectable but even "liberal"
to criticize American or British or French policy, but to cast the
slightest doubt on Soviet Russian policy was to leave oneself open
to denunciation as a fascist, a reactionary, and even a war crim-
inal. We even spoke of an absolute dictatorship like Russia (or the
satellite People's Democracies under its domination) as "new
types of democracy."
Scores of well-meaning men and women throughout the
civiHzed world opposed or indifferent to Communism, who would
have been horrified at the thought that they were supporting
a dictatorial state where more than 12,000,000 citizens were
exploited as slaves in forced labor camps, fell into the trap care-
fully laid for them by the Kremlin and its agents and propa-
gandists abroad.
Power, by Bertrand Russell, New York, W. W. Norton & Co. Publishers.
15
A typical victim of the semantic fallacy that the parties
directed by the Cominform represented the left and that the
so-called People's Democracies were a new type of democracy
was O. John Rogge, former Assistant U. S. Attorney General.
Mr. Rogge was probably an "innocent" and not a com-
munist. Because he made no effort to familiarize himself with
the Soviet Mein Kampf he became an easy prey for the Comin-
form's mystique. For many years he was a spokesman for move-
ments dominated by the Communist Party. Precisely because
he was a well-intentioned "liberal" he was able to lead (or mis-
lead) a number of similarly well-intentioned but confused Amer-
ican liberals into the Soviet orbit.
It was not until Mr. Rogge attempted to speak out on behalf
of world peace as he understood it, at the Congress of the
World Peace Movement held in Warsaw in November, 1950, that
it dawned upon him that he was hugging a snake instead of
courting a dove of peace. The rest is a matter of recent record:
"O. John Rogge, former Assistant United States Attorney
General [cabled the correspondent of the New York Times *]
today broke the harmony of the second World Peace Con-
gress by declaring that the Cominform countries not the
United States had to resort to war 'to give the revolution a
violent shove here and there.' He declared he would not
now sign the Stockholm Peace Appeal that the Communists
have sponsored because attempts by Cominform countries
to accomplish changes by violence were a greater threat to
peace than the atomic or hydrogen bomb.
"An overwhelming majority of the 3,500 delegates and
observers loudly booed their disapproval of Mr. Rogge's
views."
Mr. Rogge charged also that the World Peace Movement
displayed its subservience to the Cominform by expelling Yugo-
slavia which, since Marshal Tito's break with Stalin, has become
in the eyes of the Kremlin, the root of all evil.
The former exponent of pro-Soviet policies still believes in
world peace, of course. But he wants genuine and not fake peace
movements. "Any further peace meetings, to be successful, must
" New York Times, November 20, 1950.
16
not become identified with the foreign policy of any particular
country. They must remain objective." *
Even more dramatic was the break with the Cominform of
Valdo Magnani and Aldo Cucchi, two leading Italian Communists
and members of Italy's National Chamber of Deputies. In their
late thirties, both men have been since their youth in the service
of Stalin. A university graduate, trained in economics and philos-
ophy, Valdo Magnani was one of the most persuasive and militant
communist organizers in the Reggio Emilia province of north-
eastern Italy. It was largely due to his tireless efforts that Reggio
Emila has today 67,000 dues-paying communists.
Both Magnani and his close friend and collaborator, Aldo
Cucchi, a surgeon by profession and a leader of an Italian partisan
unit again Nazis and Fascists in World War II, were as devoted to
the "Party Line" as communists can be. But they were also good
Italians which, in the long run, is incompatible with Cominform
orthodoxy.
In 1950 Magnani was sent for inspiration to the People's
Democracies behind the Iron Curtain only to discover that his
"honesty has been too much exploited." "Between what I saw
in Poland," he said upon his return to Italy, "and what I have
been told in the communist propaganda sheets, there is an
abyss." Magnani also told a provincial Party congress that it
was the duty of Italian Communists to defend the sacred ground
of the fatherland from any aggression, no matter whence it
came and that Russia must be considered a nation like any other.
His friend Aldo Cucchi concurred.
This bit of heresy against the Socialist Fatherland and Com-
rade Stalin, the Great Father of the Proletariat, was more than
the Kremlin would tolerate. Practically overnight, Magnani and
Cucchi became, as far as the Cominform was concerned, Titoist
traitors. Fascist renegades and, of course, enemies of peace.
Both men sum up their views on Communism and peace in
a recent pamphlet in which they write in part:
"There is a widespread opinion in the Communist Party
that revolution can take its flag forward only by means of
war. This opinion is officially tolerated, though it is one of
O. John Rogge in the New Leader of January 29, 1951.
17
the things that are not supposed to be said. The campaign
in favor of peace is for some Communists merely a kind of
blind, (emphasis suppHed) It is thought, in other words,
that in the present stage of the world struggle revolution
can win only on the bayonets of an army tJiat invades our
country. We know that these comrades are thinking of the
Red Army or of the armies of the People's Democracies.
But the opinion that revolution can win only on the bayonets
of an army crossing our frontiers, what does it represent
today? It means that war is considered inevitable, and this
is an error that prejudices the whole struggle for peace."
Another tragic victim of the Cominform's peace fraud — one
of countless thousands, if not millions — is a thirty -year -old
Turkish journalist, Asian Humbaraci. Black-haired and soft-voiced,
Humbaraci looks more like the romantic lead in an oriental film
than a militant champion of peace and human rights. Firsthand
experience with injustice in many countries of the Middle East,
however, prompted him to give up his lucrative job as corre-
spondent for the New York Times and embrace the creed of
Stalinism.
Hailed by the world communist press, Asian Humbaraci was
appointed by the Cominform as a member of the Permanent
Committee of the Partisans of Peace and president of the Union
of Progressive Young Turks, a clandestine communist organiza-
tion with headquarters in Paris. He led the Turkish delegation
to the Budapest Congress of the World Federation of Democratic
Youth (an aflfiliate of the World Peace Movement) in August,
1949.
While accredited as Paris correspondent of The New Central
European Observer, an English publication owned by the Czecho-
slovak government, Humbaraci's articles were printed in com-
munist publications throughout the world, including Krasnaia
Zvezda, the official Red Army newspaper. He was constantly
quoted over Radio Moscow and Radio Prague as the "man who
chose real freedom."
But the young Turkish Communist, passionately honest and
tenacious in support of his beliefs, needed only one year of activ-
ity behind the scenes of the Cominform, particularly in the Par-
tisans of Peace to discover firsthand that the international
communist movement serves the aims of Russian power and not
18
the people in whose name it speaks. He discovered, too, that
there is "no international communism, but only a Russian pohcy"
— that the mask reciting slogans for peace and economic justice
hides Soviet Russia's hunger for power, for world domination.
When Asian Humbaraci could no longer endure communist
demands to violate his conscience, he decided to break with the
Cominform. It was not an easy thing to do for a man caught in
Moscow's clutches. "Should I have given my life for something
that I knew to be false?" he asked in the first days of his agony.
"I couldn't just forget my mistakes and resign, for I owe a ransom
to free men."
In October, 1949, at a Congress of the World Federation of
Democratic Youth in Rome, Humbaraci committed the unpardon-
able crime of voting against the Soviet delegation. That finished
him. Then and there he was informed that he had been expelled
from the Permanent Committee of the Partisans of Peace as an
"enemy of the people." He was subsequently given, at his deter-
mined insistence, a "trial" where, as a matter of course, he was
also charged with being a "spy" for the Turkish government,
despite the fact that at the time he was a passportless exile from
his country. The communist judges first outshouted him, then
marched from the room rather than listen to proof of the falsity
of the accusation.
But let Asian Humbaraci himself describe the Partisans of
Peace:
"True to the Kremlin's super-Machiavellianism, it is by
exploiting man's sacred desire for peace that the Russian
rulers carry on their war preparations through undermining
the West's moral and material strength. For behind the an-
gelical name of Peace Partisans is hidden a great political
and military enterprise of Moscow.
"That the Peace Partisans (or the World Peace Move-
ment), is a Moscow-governed body is, undoubtedly, known
in the United States. But a great many people in Europe
and Asia still believe in the sincerity and usefulness of this
'peace' movement.
"As a former member of the Permanent Committee of
the World Congress of Peace Partisans and an activist of
the international Stalinist movement, I am in a position to
19
know the true facts. Policies for the estabhshment of 'world
peace' are supposedly laid down by the Permanent Commit-
tee of the Peace Partisans. Yet when this body meets, despite
the external trimmings of a respectable international gath-
ering, it is actually for pure propaganda purposes rather
than for policy-making. In accordance with the established
Stalinist pattern, all the distinguished intellectuals who come
to the congresses from various parts of the world are not
called upon to make decisions but to put their stamp of
approval on what has been decided beforehand in Moscow.
"This is not idle talk but a horrible fact which I dis-
covered first in the Soviet embassy of Paris and then at the
secretariat of the 'Partisans of Peace.' It is further ascertained
by my being expelled from the Permanent Committee for
having dared, during a closed session of the Peace Partisans
in Rome, to vote against a Russian resolution."
At his "trial" in Rome, Asian Humbaraci had a glimpse, if
only for a moment, of what Soviet "justice" means and how "con-
fessions" are extracted from innocent people. "I was lucky," he
said, "that I decided to revolt in Rome under the protection of a
'decadent Western democracy' and not when I was a delegate
in the 'People's Democracy' of Hungary. There I would have been
shot for my heresy."
20
I
<!5f<5^<^f^5£^^£^5*<^^S^^^^£^^«^^
^£^H^£^^£^S:-^£^£^^^^£^^£^^
THE STOCKHOLM
APPEAL
T
I HE Stockholm Appeal for outlaw-
ing the atom bomb was undoubtedly Soviet Russia's most am-
bitious and successful "peace" offensive of the post-war period.
Exploiting general fears of an atomic war, the Cominform,
through the World Peace Movement, originally set out to get
400,000,000 signatures from all over the world for this appeal,
including 5,000,000 in the United States. Whether this goal,
as the communists claim, has already been reached is open to
conjecture. But there is no doubt that the Stockholm Appeal was
a major Soviet propaganda success which trapped millions of
war-jittery and unsuspecting men and women throughout the
world.
No technique for gaining signatures of indorsement for the
appeal, including a virtual door-to-door canvass by communists
and their sympathizers, was left unused. In France and Italy, for
instance, those approached for signatures were told that the
appeal was as much directed at Soviet Russia as at other coun-
tries. To be sure, they insisted that there was not the remotest
chance of such a "peace-loving country as Russia" being the first
to use the atomic bomb against an enemy. This left the implica-
tion that the United States, which had already used the bomb
against Japan, was really the criminal country. A similar tech-
nique, with some variations, was also used in the United States
and Latin America. But difi^erent methods were employed behind
the Iron Curtain where the communist secret police or the Soviet
M.V.D. have persuasive means of "convincing" the recalcitrant
and rabidly anti-communist populations.
21
The technique used in Poland, where the CathoHc Church
retains the allegiance of the people and exercises authority despite
communist persecution, is a case in point.
Communist officials would summon the church ofiRcials of a
locality and ask them to sign the Stockholm Appeal. If they
demurred — as most Roman Catholic priests would do, being
aware of the spurious nature of the petition — they were reminded
that the church was committed to working for "peace"; that this
was a "peace" resolution; and that if they refused to sign it the
state would have no alternative but to forbid them to continue
teaching the young, as apparently "peace" was no longer their
purpose.
"By this technique of coercion and word-twisting, the War-
saw regime has forced not a few priests to sign the petition. It
then announces to the local populace that the best proof that
the peace' petition is genuine is that their church leaders have
signed it." *
By such deceptive and coercive means the communists also
succeeded in forcing Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Moslem
clergymen in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria and
Albania to sign the Stockholm Appeal. But millions of men and
women, both behind and this side of the Iron Curtain, signed
the appeal simply because they were unaware of the true iden-
tity of the "Peace Partisans" or because they hoped against hope
that this was the way to prevent the outbreak of atomic warfare.
Others in Western Europe were induced by fear of possible
retaliation if the communists, backed by the Red Army, should
come to power. With the example of the purge trials and the
all-prevailing terror in Soviet Russia's satellite countries before
them, the middle-of-the-road Europeans constantly ask them-
selves the question: "Who knows? With Russia so close, the same
thing may happen in our countries. Is it not better not to be
among those suspected of anti-communism?"
The communists are, of course, aware of this universal fear.
They are deliberately fostering it. They nurse it. Through fear
they still hope to split the members of die North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. Fear and deception are their stock in trade.
* christian Science Monitor, August 8, 1950.
22
It was the outstanding Swedish Liberal daily Dagens Nyheter
that first shed some light on the Stockholm Appeal and its
sponsors. Sweden, like Switzerland, is Europe's traditional neutral
country, and its government usually seeks to avoid controversies
with other powers, especially with a great power like Russia
which is but a stone's throw across the Baltic Sea. But the
Dagens Nyheter, like Sweden's Prime Minister Mr. Erlander,
was "disgusted" with the way Moscow was brandishing the
name of their capital in international communist propaganda.
The Stockholm Appeal, Mr. Erlander said in a speech on July 16,
1950, had no more connection with Stockholm than similar earlier
appeals "emanating from so-called peace conferences."
In an angry and outspoken editorial entitled "Warning for
Swindlers," the Dagens Nyheter stated: "This peace movement
is, as a matter of fact, directed by agents of the most pronounced
military power in the world — a power which does not hesitate
to resort to the crudest means of terror even in peace time and
which, by its actions and its imperalist aims, is threatening the
whole democratic world."
A similar evaluation of the Stockholm Appeal was given by
informed men and women in other parts of Europe this side of
the Iron Curtain and in the United States. Thirteen American
leaders in religious, fraternal, veterans', labor and patriotic organi-
zations branded it as "a phony peace petition to disarm the United
States."
The circulation of the Stockholm Appeal under the direction
of the American Communist Party, they declared, was intended
"to disarm the United States in keeping with their [the com-
munists'] historic procedure of infiltrating and later paralyzing
a nation which they wish to invade."
Dean Acheson, United States Secretary of State, warned,
at the same time, that the Soviet Union was trying to center
attention on the use of atomic weapons in order to distract atten-
tion from communist aggression in other forms. "The real crime
against humanity," he said, "is aggression and, in particular, the
deliberate resort to armed aggression in defiance of the United
Nations. The war crimiaals are the people who sanction such
action. The weapons used are quite incidental to the crime. Thus,
the communists throughout the world have given the lie to the
Stockholm proposal in their support of North Korean aggression."
23
speaking on behalf of Western writers, scientists, educators
and trade unionists, the Congress for Cultural Freedom declared:
"The atom bomb is a horrible weapon. So are flame throwers,
incendiary bombs and mustard gas. The aim of communist pro-
paganda is to hypnotize the public into focusing all its passion
and emotion on one type of weapon, and making it forget that
others exist. The Stockholm brand of 'pacificism' has no objec-
tion to dog fighting cat, provided that biting is permitted, claw-
ing forbidden." Disarmament, they said, must extend to all
weapons. Any government which commits an act of aggression
by using atomic, or any other weapons, is to be regarded as a
war criminal.
A secret document which has recently come into my pos-
session sheds additional light on what Moscow hopes to achieve
with its periodic "peace" offensives, especially with the Stock-
holm Appeal. It is part of a speech delivered by Mikhail Suslov,
a private secretary to Josef Stalin and a secretary of the Central
Committee of the Russian Communist Party, at a secret Comin-
form meeting held in Berlin on July 21, 1950.*
Mikhail Suslov, as revealed by this document, assailed the
western communist leaders for having made practically "no effort
to rally those who signed the petitions for outlawing the atomic
bomb into any sort of organization." While conceding that most
of those who signed the Appeal could no longer be located or
organized, he, nevertheless, insisted that 20 to 25 per cent of the
signers could be persuaded to join the communist ranks.
The "widespread campaign against the atomic bomb," Suslov
said, "has succeeded in attracting young workers who represent
a valuable revolutionary element." They are the Cominform's
"assurance of successful revolutionary and insurrectionary action."
The Cominform leader further pointed out that the Stock-
holm Appeal had enabled many communists to infiltrate workers'
factory councils, in western European countries, which are re-
" Mikhail Suslov was accompanied to the secret Cominform session in Berlin
by P. N. Pospelov, Soviet "ideological leader" and president of the Marx-Engels-
Lenin Institute. Other world communist leaders there were Palmiro Togliatti of
Italy, Jacques Duclos of France, Wang Chia-hsiang of the Chinese Communist
Party, Harry PoUitt of Great Britain, and a host of Cominform figures from Iron
Curtain countries.
24
garded by the Kremlin as "the economic counterpart of the local
Soviet in the general frame of revolutionary strategy." He dis-
closed also that the Cominform hereafter would pay greater atten-
tion to outlying regions in countries like France and Italy, instead
of focusing on big cities; that it would work to elect communists
to municipal governments and councils in these areas. In event of
war, the councils, trained by and taught by communists, would
form a basis for organizing local Soviets, Russian style.
Mikhail Suslov's speech at the Berlin meeting of the Comin-
form is of historic significance. It is the first disclosure by a
leading figure of the Cominform and the Russian Communist
Party of the aims and purposes of Moscow's periodic and wide-
spread peace offensives. Reproduced here in full is the part deal-
ing with the Stockholm Appeal.
Excerpts from Mikhail Suslov's Speech
"The Stockholm Appeal:
"It is now the task of the West European parties to absorb
the tremendous social gain accumulated by our campaign to
ban the atom bomb. We all know what a great diversity of
social strata was touched upon in the course of the campaign.
But no one has as yet undertaken an analysis of the results gained.
There has been practically no effort to rally those who signed
the petitions for outlawing the atom bomb into any sort of
organization.
"This, of course, was a great mistake. The overwhelming
majority of those who signed our petitions can no longer be
located or organized. But 20 to 25% of the persons contacted
can be gotten to join our organizations. That is why we should
concern ourselves, in the first place, with organizing these 20
to 25%. Who are they?
"The overwhelming majority of them are workers, peasants,
urban and rural middle class people, professionals, intellectuals,
housewives, young men and women, war victims, veterans, etc.
They are extremely valuable elements to be organized. But how
are they to be organized precisely in view of their great social
diversity?
"To some degree they cannot be organized since they are
25
not interested in any political movement. But they are always
interested in their own safety, in their own protection and are
likely to vote in local and municipal elections for oflGcials who
have their safety at heart.
"It is thus clear that these elements are likely to exert
certain pressure on municipal authorities and coiinty oflBcials.
Such authorities and officials seeking election or reelection would
most likely receive a majority of votes on a platform which calls
for outlawing the atom bomb ~ which means the protection of
the civilian population against the ravages of the bomb.
"It is therefore quite evident that even the unorganized and
unorganizable part of the urban and agricultural population
would help us to win municipal and county councils which would
be politically homogeneous and united in their determination to
outlaw the atom bomb and probably all other forms of Anglo-
American aggression and warmongering.
"A relentless effort, an intensification of the campaign to con-
demn the atom bomb and Anglo-American imperialism would
also result in the election of municipal and county councils which
could be considered as reliable organs of local resistance. Under
conditions of war, the militant resistance of these councils — if
properly politicalized by [communist] party fractions — would
also form the basis for the formation of local Soviets. It is there-
fore correct to recommend to the Combatants de la Liberte in
France and Italy — or, for that matter, to all other local organiza-
tions of the Peace Partisans — to concentrate, in the first place, on
municipal and county councils.
"The great peace movement created by the Stockholm
Appeal can also be used for other ends. We can penetrate the
yellow trade unions and other organizations with our appeal for
safeguarding the peace. We can penetrate organizations of war
veterans, war victims, peasant and worker societies which are
not yet on our side. Cultural societies, lovers of art and literature
can help us organize the unorganized mass of people in favor
of the Stockholm Appeal. To gain this end, our purpose should
be to organize as many local societies as possible.
"Although all such activities must be entrusted to local
Party [communist] fractions, who can undertake them most effec-
tively, an inter-federation must centralize all such local bodies
26
organized in order to provide for unified guidance and political
direction.
"A special chapter in this work is the organization of new
workshop contacts. Strange though it may seem, it is, neverthe-
less, a fact that some workshops are inaccessible to militant trade
unionism. Catholic workers or working women may not respond
to wage demands raised by the revolutionary trade union move-
ment. But they will respond to peace appeals and especially to
the Stockholm Appeal for outlawing the atom bomb.
"An analysis of the campaign for the Stockholm Appeal pro-
vides extraordinary examples of backward categories of workers
joining with us in the demand for the outlawing of the atom
bomb. We must therefore treat with special care such contacts in
workshops which had been hitherto inaccessible to us. They are
a valuable element. They are a valuable edition to our workshop
councils which must be the forerunners of local Soviets.
"Now I want to underline the most significant aspect of
our campaign for the Stockholm Appeal. Through our wide-
spread campaign against the atom bomb we have succeeded in
attracting young men who represent a valuable revolutionary
element. They are joining our military sections. They are our
assurance of successful revolutionary and insurrectionary action.
"These young men, this new element which comes to us
from the factories and workshops is healthy because it is not
infected with nationahsm and Trotskyism-Titoism. At a time
when in the most important countries of Western Europe —
France, Italy as well as Germany — our main task is to rid our
ranks of nationalist and Trotsky-Titoist trends, these new ele-
ments, the young workers from the workshops are our most impor-
tant source of revolutionary action.
"I do not mean to say by this that I expect to obtain our
most important contacts with the factory, plant and workshop
through our peace campaign. No, comrades, such contacts will
always be forthcoming through the trade unions and the factory
councils. But, as I pointed out, a significant number of workers
can be contacted through our peace campaign. Our factory coun-
cils will be immeasurably strengthened through the infusion of
this new healthy element. And please remember that it is the
factory council (shop steward organization) that is the economic
27
counterpart of the local soviet in the general frame of our revo-
lutionary strategy."
This document speaks for itself. It is another affirmation of
the well-estabHshed fact that the employment of the "peace"
campaign as camouflage for strengthening the Cominform and
furthering Soviet Russia's aims for world mastery, by enlisting
"innocents," groups and people indifferent or even antagonistic
towards Communism, has been a cardinal Soviet principle since
the Bolsheviks overthrew by armed force the democratic Keren-
sky Government in 1917.
28
THE BATTLE FOR
FREEDOM AND PEACE
W E have come to a turning
point in the history of Western civihzation. As yet, to be sure,
we cannot evaluate completely the far-reaching events now
taking place in Asia and the West or define the point to which
they will go. However, though a major atomic conflict may de-
velop from the impetus of present tensions, war is not inevitable.
It will become inevitable if we do not understand Soviet Russia.
We shall, indeed, be building our future on quagmires if we
build it on ignorance of Soviet reality — the economic, social,
moral and political contradictions between Soviet totalitarianism
and Western democracy.
Soviet Russia is a totalitarian state dynamically engaged in
a totalitarian process of expansion. The realpolitik of its leaders
is based on a total disregard of Western concepts of ethics.
Bolshevism, as has been indicated, regards our moral criteria as
superfluous ballast, little more than a bourgeois myth. In the
Leninist-Stalinist perversion of Marx, "capitalism" — i.e. Western
civilization with all its political, social and cultural institutions —
is doomed to perish. Thus, the Kremlin leaders may alternately
raise the slogans of peace and war. They will discard peace when
it will no longer suit their revolutionary strategy.
In the permanent struggle between totalitarianism and free-
dom, dictatorship has, for the moment, the upper hand. For totali-
tarianism derives much of its strength from the simplicity of the
ideas it espouses. Amid postwar doubts, fears and unsettled
cravings, the Stalinist creed offers its adherents the boon of cer-
29
tainty, a faith for living. Its thesis is simple: Western civilization
stands between man and happiness. It is the old and well-tried
totalitarian technique of the Big Lie.
For the Russian Revolution, whatever merit it had, died
long ago. Its basic concepts were betrayed by stunted minds
reaching out for more and more power. Only the myth survives.
In Soviet Russia today, liberty is a meaningless word no less
for the artist, the literary man, the scientist, than for the worker.
Forced labor and a ruthless bureaucracy prevail on a scale incon-
ceivable to normal men and women reared under Western condi-
tions. Even equality, one of the fundamental tenets of Com-
munism, has given place to a new system of caste, the caste
of the ruling communist oligarchy.
Dictatorship, too, has another advantage over freedom: un-
like a democracy, it can manipulate opinion and switch policy
overnight. Thus, on May 9, 1949, Marshal V. Sokolovsky, one of
the most prominent Soviet war leaders, informed the Russian
people — and the West — that Soviet Russia was preparing for
war. "The lessons of the Second World War," he said, "are graphic
proof that only a state which is stronger than its opponent eco-
nomically, militarily and in a moral-political sense, ... is capable
of winning a modern war." But in his significant declaration
issued on February 17, 1951, Stalin told the unhappy Russian
people, and again the West, that Russia, as a matter of fact, had
aheady begun to "demobilize" its armed forces back in 1946.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of a gullible West totally unpre-
pared psychologically to counteract the Kremlin's propaganda
barrage, the Soviets have annexed over 200,000 square miles since
1939. They have increased the Russian empire to dimensions
undreamed of by the Czars. Once independent states like Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria were completely
subjected to Soviet rule. Only Yugoslavia succeeded in extricating
itself from Moscow's web.
To be sure, as in the case of Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy, the corrosive element of self-destruction is always potent
in a totalitarian state. The Kremlin's periodic "peace" campaigns,
while designed to sow confusion, uncertainty and disruption in
the West, are also concerned with the mood of the Russian people
whose restive behavior is being recorded by the Soviet press
30
from Moscow to the distant regions of Kazakhstan. The Russian
people need a great many things; but more than anything else
they want peace. Indeed, the Western world has no quarrel with
the Russian people who have been groaning under the yoke of
dictatorship for more than three decades. There is certainly a vast
abyss between the power-hungry Communist dictators and the
peoples they rule. This is as true of Russians as of the peoples of
the satellite countries.
The Kremlin's overextended empire may yet prove to be its
Achilles' heel. No satellite population inside the Iron Curtain is
friendly to Moscow. Only force and terror have thus far pre-
vented the anti-Soviet forces behind the Iron Curtain from throw-
ing off the Kremlin's yoke. But there is ample evidence that
from the Baltic to the Black Sea, these forces await the call to
revolt. In Poland, Czechoslovakia and the annexed Baltic States
underground military units are continuously battling, under insur-
mountable odds, against Moscow's picked MVD troops. Else-
where, especially in Hungary and Bulgaria, they engage in indus-
trial sabotage, stage lightning wildcat strikes and fight MVD
terror.
Nationhood, like personal freedom, is an absolute value. It is
not destroyed or "abolished" by suppression but merely driven
underground. For nations, like individuals, have a stubborn will
to survive. Stalin has long been aware of this - even if the West
has not. European experts on Russia have long been of the opin-
ion that next to the atomic bombs, the Kremlin fears this anti-
communist front more than anything else it now faces.
Indeed, though they are consulted little, though decisions
are made by the rulers on the assumption that they will bow
their necks meekly to any yoke, the ordinary people are keeping
alive their dream of freedom. They are democracy's staunchest
allies. We must not let them down again. In peace as in war,
we cannot afford to ignore the great basic hungers of mankind
for freedom and human decency. We must exert every effort to
maintain peace. But this peace will have meaning only if it is
maintained with freedom and justice.
To avoid war, Western civilization must be strong. But it
must also be wise. The time has come for our thoughts to become
bold and imaginative. Only a clear and definite peace aim will
31
successfully counteract Moscow's phony "peace" campaigns and
give us the strength to prevent the ICremlin's creeping war. Only
the belief that the civilized world is indeed fighting for a great
cause, for a true universal democracy, will consecrate the new
sacrifices and give us the strength and will to preserve peace.
32
»296
fij.Vl9 ^^
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR A FREE
EUROPE, INC., is a group of private citizens who have
drawn together to carry out concrete and direct action to
restore and strengthen man's most vakied possession —
freedom.
The Committee has as its active alHes numerous exiled
democratic leaders who have found haven in the United
States from the Communist tyranny of Eastern Europe.
Radio Free Europe, of the National Committee for a Free
Europe, is setting up facilities that will enable these trusted
patriots to be heard again by their own people. Not only
does Eastern Europe hear the exiles' impressions of the
United States, but American messages of hope and encour-
agement are transmitted, and, above all, the truth which
totalitarian governments forbid their enslaved peoples to
hear.
Freedom or the enslavement of men's minds and souls,
is the vital issue. What shall we pass on to our children—
their rightful heritage of freedom, or the spiritual devasta-
tion of Communism? At this very moment the kind of world
they will inherit hangs in the balance. The issue is for you
to decide. In the vital conflict for the preservation of free-
dom, th^ National Committee for a Free Europe offers every
single citizen the opportunity to throw in his weight.
NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR A FREE EUROPE, INC.
301 Empire State Building
350 Fifth Avenue
New York 1, N. Y.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
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